


Weaponry

by wonder_at_unlawful_things



Series: The Cocktails and Saving the World Club [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1568303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonder_at_unlawful_things/pseuds/wonder_at_unlawful_things
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As far as Maria Hill was concerned, Romanoff was a useful machine, a killer so cold she was practically just a weapon herself, ready to be pointed at whatever by whomever was giving her orders. Not really a person, not really an agent, and definitely not funny. </p>
<p>After a mission everyone dreaded, Hill and Romanoff come to an understanding.<br/>Possible trigger: very vague mentions of sexual assault and human trafficking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weaponry

It was supposed to be simple.  
They sent Barton so it would be simple. Find the assassin, assassinate her, go home. Easy. Black and white, this job; she had a long kill list and that was just what they knew. She was dangerous. She’d keep killing. She left carnage in her wake.  
Barton brought her home. Because he thought she was funny.

Maria Hill thought her eyes were going to actually roll out of her head.  
But that was the kind of thing you expected from Clint Barton; he didn’t laugh a lot but he did love to laugh, and if you could make him laugh, especially in the middle of something serious, he’d love you forever. So if the Black Widow had somehow made him laugh in the middle of him trying to shoot her, of course he had to take her in like a stray puppy. And it was so like Coulson to roll his eyes and act harsh but then let him do whatever crazy thing he wanted.  
She really thought Fury would put a stop to it, and a bullet in the Russian’s head. But Fury took the girl (and Hill admitted to feeling a little weird about the fact that this legendary assassin was only around her own age, maybe younger) into an interview room for a full four hours and when he came out she could tell that they were actually going to keep a KGB murderer under their roof. Actually.

“Sir,” she said, “May I speak freely?”  
He nodded.  
“This is crazy,” she said. “I think it’s a bad idea.”  
Fury rubbed his forehead. “It’s crazy,” he admitted, “but crazy ideas are often some of the best.”

Hill waited till he was gone to let out a sigh that was maybe a shade overdramatic. “Crazy ideas also often kill everyone,” she muttered under her breath.

…

When they let Romanoff start doing fieldwork, Hill didn’t like it one bit, but she did have to admit that the other woman was good at what she did. Maybe cold, maybe unfeeling, maybe tightly reserved and drawn into herself (and maybe still evil), but good at her job. And strangely loyal to Fury, looking to him for orders even when they’d been given by Coulson or by Hill. The only person she really seemed to talk to much was Barton, which was unsurprising. What was surprising was that every time Romanoff whispered something in his ear or muttered something under her breath to him, Barton almost lost his shit laughing, or if he couldn’t do that for some reason (like they were in a FUCKING IMPORTANT BRIEFING THAT HILL HAD SPENT A LOT OF TIME ON, for example) he’d crack a big grin.

Hill did not get it. She’d never heard the woman make a joke, never seen her really smile or get upset or angry, even when the other agents were actually being kind of shitty about the whole thing. Hill didn’t like the situation, or Romanoff, anymore than they did, but she could be a goddamn adult about it and respect Fury’s decision, for god’s sake. But she didn’t understand why Barton thought she was so funny, or so worth spending time with, or the affection he had in his face with her. As far as Maria Hill was concerned, Romanoff was a useful machine, a killer so cold she was practically just a weapon herself, ready to be pointed at whatever by whomever was giving her orders. Not really a person, not really an agent, and definitely not funny.

Sure, other people had called Hill cold all her adult life, but she was just being professional. She had emotions, of course. She just kept them in check. It hadn’t been easy being a woman in the Marines, and it wasn’t easy working her way towards the glass ceiling at SHIELD and maintaining enough velocity to crack it when she got there (sure Peggy Carter had founded it, but try telling half the men between Hill and the director’s chair that), and getting upset or pissed or overjoyed or whatever in public wasn’t going to help anything.  
But she had feelings. Romanoff barely even had facial expressions.  
…

The mission was one of the ones they all dreaded. Messy, tricky, already half-botched by Interpol who’d only bothered to research half the situation, and there were kids involved. Faces were tight and voices terse.

Hill still didn’t much like Romanoff, even though it’d been years and the other agents were starting to accept her, the younger ones even to be awed by her, but for something like this Barton and Romanoff were who you wanted on the ground, emotions or lack thereof aside.  
They were in, looking for the kids, when word came over the wire that the group holding the little girls was part of a terrorist organization, and the intel was in the building.

“Orders?” Romanoff’s voice, low and emotionless, asked over the comm.  
“Recover the intel first,” Fury responded.  
“What?” Hill spun to face the director in the control room. “Sir—”  
“That intel will save lives, and we have orders from a member of the Council to recover it,” Fury said steadily. “Recover the intel first. Do you copy?”  
Romanoff said, without an audible reaction of any kind, as if she were responding to a change in her grocery list, “Copy.”  
“Sir—” Barton said, then made a little cut-off strangled noise. “Copy.”  
Hill fumed silently and sat glaring at Fury, who just gave her a measured look and didn’t explain himself.

“I have the intel, sir,” Romanoff said a few minutes later. “Proceed to recover the subjects?”  
She meant the twenty girls between the ages of six and thirteen who were about to be sold into sex slavery. Hill made a sound that she was afraid conveyed her rage and took off her comm for a moment to breathe it out.  
“It’s vital that we recover that intel,” Fury said. “Sit rep on the subjects?”  
“Looks like fifteen men, armed. Assault rifles, military grade. I don’t see explosives,” Barton said.  
“It’s a risk,” Coulson said from where he stood near the door of the control room.  
“We could lose the intel, sir,” Sitwell added. Fury gave him a look and he shut up.  
Over the comm, Fury said, “Romanoff. Bring back the intel, then go back in if necessary. Barton. Try to pick off the men and get the kids.”  
Romanoff said, “Any chance of back-up, sir?”  
Barton said, his voice rising, “They might start shooting kids in there if I do that.”

Fury looked at Coulson, and said, off-comm, “What’s the situation on back-up?”  
Coulson shook his head. “Negative, sir. Can’t get them in without alerting the terrorists.”  
Hill cursed inside her head.  
Fury said, “Negative on back-up. Romanoff, get the intel out. Barton—”  
“What if I bring the intel and Nat gets the kids?” Barton asked. His voice was strained.  
“I can do that, sir,” Romanoff said.  
“Negative,” said Fury. “Stick to the original plan.”  
“Yes, sir, copy,” said Romanoff.  
“Sir,” said Barton in a tone exactly half a shade shy of insubordination.

Hill restrained herself from throwing her headset across the room.  
“It’s not the best move, sir, with respect,” she said. “Romanoff could do it better.”  
“Barton can hit them from above and surprise them, and Romanoff can get me the intel faster,” Fury said. “Respect my decisions or get out of this room, Hill. Can you do that?”  
“Yes, sir,” Hill ground out, her face burning with anger.

Three minutes later an agent ran in with the flash drive Romanoff had given him and they heard the first few men going down with Barton’s arrows over the comms. Romanoff came in.  
“Orders, sir,” she said.  
“Go in there and help your partner save those kids,” Fury said.  
“Yes, sir,” she said. Hill heard nothing in her voice, no note of relief or joy or worry, just her regular calm tone.

One minute and thirteen seconds later, they heard Romanoff enter the room and start fighting.  
…

They saved the kids, but it was rough. Barton had been right; his arrows had flown true through bullet-strewn chaos. None of the kids were killed, but a few were hurt by ricochets. Romanoff had gotten them out in the end, as Barton finished the last few men, but seeing her lead out those terrified crying kids, her face like a statue, marble and perfect, hadn’t made Hill like her any better.

The stories the kids told during their debriefs were terrifying. They had Carter and Hill and Romanoff do the debriefings, thinking the girls might prefer to talk to women. Hill watched all of the videos later, to compile the reports. Romanoff could talk to the kids fine— she was after all a spy, she could be what people needed— but Hill noticed little change in her demeanor between interviews, none of the tremors in the hands or sorrow in the face or slumps in the shoulders she saw in her own interviews and in Sharon’s.

When she finally finished for the night, in SHIELD’s French base, where they’d landed, she sat for a long moment with her head in her hands and then gathered herself. She needed a fucking drink. But first she needed to throw some water on her face, wipe up the traitorous evidence of tears, take a minute to be a person again, at least a person together enough to order a fuckton of tequila in French without bursting into tears.

Hill dragged herself like a zombie out of the office where she’d been working and down the hall into the women’s bathroom. She started to run the water into her hands and had splashed the first handful onto her face before she heard it.

It was a small, quiet, sound, barely louder than ordinary breathing. But the harsh, wrenched, gasping quality was unmistakable. Someone was in pain.

Hill quietly turned off the water, adrenaline flowing a little. She’d thought everyone else had gone out or holed up in the barracks already.

“Hello?” she asked, hand on her gun. She glanced under the first stall, looking for shadows. Clear.

No one answered. She checked the second stall. Clear.

One left, the larger one with a shower in it. She couldn’t see the whole thing, so she forced open the door and went in, gun drawn.

In the corner of the shower, huddled into a tiny ball, red head bent, was Natasha Romanoff, heaving with silent sobs.

Hill lowered her gun and sucked in her breath.

Romanoff’s head shot up and her hands went to her eyes, wiping her tears. She was silent and sat, just looking at Hill, a look of mingled despair and defiance that Hill didn’t know how to read or how to handle.

So Hill left the bathroom and almost kept going, but then she thought better of it and waited, outside the bathroom, unobtrusive but clearly in sight of the door.

Romanoff came out a few minutes later, all traces of her tears gone.

“Hey,” Hill said.  
Romanoff looked at her warily, an animal who might bolt or lunge any second.  
Her look reminded Hill suddenly of some of the little girls they’d saved.  
Romanoff said nothing, did nothing, kept looking.  
Hill said, “I just wondered if, maybe…I need a drink. I thought maybe I could buy you one, too?”  
Romanoff’s look remained still and wary for a moment, and then relaxed into something slightly less threatened, less threatening, more human.  
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay. I could use a drink.”  
“Good,” Hill said.

They stood there, awkward, for a moment more, and then Romanoff said, “Not wine, though, right? Because right now I think if some waiter judged me for ordering my own bottle, I might hit him in the face with it.”

Hill laughed and laughed at her laughter, surprised at it. “I was thinking tequila,” she said.  
“Good,” Romanoff said. “I want very much to not remember tonight.”

Hill laughed again. “I’m not sure it works retroactively,” she said.  
“Really?” Romanoff asked, her face solemn. “Because that’s what always seemed to happen in Russia.”

Hill stared at her, unsure, until Romanoff cracked a wry grin and they both burst out laughing, neither sure exactly why.  
They grabbed their coats and headed for the door.

 

Turned out, Romanoff was hilarious.

Fin


End file.
